Saturday after Ash Wednesday, March 8, 2025

Luke 5, 27-32

Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes complained to his disciples, saying, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”

These events took place in Capernaum, the town where Jesus made his headquarters during the three years of his Public Life.  St. Luke calls St. Matthew by his Hebrew name, Levi, perhaps to emphasize to his Greek readers that it was a Jew who was collecting taxes from his own people for the Romans.  This being so, the Jews held him as an outcast and treated him as they would a Gentile, like the Greeks.  

Leaving everything behind.  The dead do this, they leave everything behind.  When the Apostles and the Lord’s other followers did this, they were dying to this world so as to enter the Kingdom of God.  It is both a sign to others as well as a step from the things that formerly filled their lives towards the things of heaven.  Levi probably gave up more of these earthly things than any of the other Apostles.  He was a wealthy man with a sizable house.  And followed him.  The tense of the verb indicates that Jesus did not mean for him to follow him to a particular location at which point he could stop following, but that this would be a continuous action, for the rest of his life — not merely on foot but with his heart and mind.

A great banquet.  It is likely that Levi gave this banquet not on the same day as he was called: he would have had no time to make the arrangements since he was going with the Lord.  He would have given it on the next day or perhaps even during the next week.  Food and wine for a large banquet would take time to gather and entailed the purchase of beef cattle or goats, among other things.  Invitations had also to be sent out to all Levi’s friends and associates, and there would need to be musicians to encourage  a festive atmosphere.

“Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”  The Pharisees and scribes do not ask this of Jesus but of his Apostles, seeking to undermine their faith in him.  The Pharisees and scribes see Jesus as a pretender to the title of messiah because they do not understand the purpose of the messiah promised by the Prophets.  It had nothing to do with military victory over the Romans and the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel but rather with something far greater: the salvation of the world.  For the Pharisees, the messiah they expected would never eat with tax collectors and sinners: he would smite them.

“Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.”  Jesus, the Divine Physician who heals us from our sins.  The Lord’s answer is a rebuke to the Pharisees who do not seek the conversion of sinners but only to justify their own behavior.  But the Lord declares that he has come into the world specifically in order “call” sinners, that is, literally from the Greek, to “invite” them.  It is these tax collectors and sinners whom he invites to the Kingdom of God, not the Pharisees, who account themselves as just, as though they have no need of salvation.

It is so necessary for us to admit our sinfulness despite temptations to deny this or to water down or excuse our sins.  It is those who confess their sins and do penance who are following the Lord Jesus.